For many users, the performance of the two formats is more important that the patent arguments: In recent years, H.264 has rightly reached the top position among the codecs. The quality of MP4 videos with this coding is generally regarded as very good. However, H.265 still easily outperforms them. WebM has an equally convincing image and sound quality, but VP8 does not fall entirely into the same class as H.264. The extent to which VP9 matches H.265 (also called HEVC) with regard to image quality is a hot topic. Some are of the opinion that they are equals, others say that the quality of VP9 is nowhere near that of H.264.
Two other decisive features when comparing the codecs are file size and the speed of coding and decoding. Both have a direct effect on usability: to ensure rapid online data transfer, the file size should be as small as possible. This is particularly important for mobile internet users. However, H.264 is known to generate comparatively large files. However, on the user side, decoding takes place very quickly and is not particularly complex. This once again is linked to the common use of the codec. Many devices already support the decoding of H.264 videos from a hardware point of view.
This is not the case for H.265 – which may have something to do with the very high licensing costs payable by hardware manufacturers. The more recent codec requires a lot of computer power, which may particularly lead to problems with smartphones. WebM is specifically intended for streaming applications and yields good results, both with regard to the file size and the speed. Once again the lack of prevalence is a problem here: although many Android devices have installed support for VP8 and TV manufacturers such as LG, Samsung and Sharp are gradually equipping their devices with VP8/VP9 support, iPhones, iPads and other Apple devices still do not provide any hardware support. This means that their performance can be expected to be much poorer.
| WebM | MP4 |
Codecs | VP8, VP9, Vorbis, Opus | H.264, H.265, AAC, MP3 |
Quality | Good quality | Better quality |
File size | Small files | Large files |
Prevalence | Mainly supported by Google | Very common |
Patents | Open source | Licensable |